AG Campbell pushes for wariness of child labor exploitation, especially among immigrants

The arcade chain Dave & Buster's agreed to pay more than a quarter of a million dollars to resolve allegations that include violation of child labor laws, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced Thursday. Campbell shared the news amid a push from her office to raise awareness about legal protections for young people from labor abuses, especially in immigrant communities.

“What we do see is a cross section of the children that are more likely to be exploited are children who live in low-income communities, immigrants, communities of color,” Campbell said. “That's not by accident, it's the way systems are designed. That's where people go to exploit folks because of lack of information and language barriers.”

The attorney general's office is launching a child labor working group to “identify investigations targets” and develop new practices to enforce the labor laws on the books.

Her office's Fair Labor Division enforces the laws that govern youth employment. Within the past three years, the Office's Fair Labor Division cited nearly 130 employers for violating Massachusetts child labor laws, with penalties totaling almost over $1.3 million. Those citations affected roughly 2,000 minors from across the state, according to Campbell. Her office later confirmed some of those employers subjugated immigrant minors to child labor exploitation.

Between October 2021 to April 2023, over 4,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Massachusetts, according to federal data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. This number doesn't include youth who arrived with their families.

Campbell said the settlement with Dave & Buster's included $275,000 in restitution to resolve allegations of labor violations in multiple locations, a figure that includes compensation for more than 800 employees. The company was cited for not providing meal breaks of at least 30 minutes to employees who worked shifts lasting longer than six hours, not obtaining work permits for minors before they began employment and by employing 16- or 17-year-old minors for later hours than permitted by law.

The complaint was launched by a parent who alleged their child was made to work past midnight on a weeknight.

A spokesperson for Dave and Buster's could not be reached for comment.

“Even over the past year, multiple fast-food restaurants and dining establishments across the state have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for violating child labor laws,” said Liam Quinn, youth programs director at the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety. “These violations include young people working too many hours, working with deep-fat fryers, high-speed ovens, and have resulted in multiple youth being burned.”

Campbell said her office is issuing a guidance to remind employers of labor laws to ensure minors are safe at work, including a reminder of the state $15 hourly wage for workers age 15 and older. Minors under 14 cannot legally work, with the few exceptions of babysitting, working as a news carrier, working on farms, or working in entertainment with a special waiver.

Campbell says her office is also meeting regularly with immigrant worker centers and providing know-your-rights education to vulnerable communities. It recently sent letters to all state public school superintendents responsible for issuing work permits to minors and fact sheets in multiple languages to be distributed among guardians of high school students about the rights of immigrant workers and labor trafficking.

According to Gladys Vega, the executive director of the Chelsea-based service organization La Colaborativa, parents are often behind the long hours their children work.

“Sometimes parents don't know any different. Sometimes parents are worried about paying the coyote they need to pay whatever they left behind in their country wherever they borrow the money to come here. So everyone in that family has to work,” she said. Vega said that at least 250 children work in Chelsea alone, and often parents rely on their teenagers' checks for utility bills.

In one instance, Vega said a 15-year-old skinned his finger on a machine in the deli department of a supermarket while he was working in a position he wasn't supposed to be working in. Vega said it's essential that employers and parents both made aware of the stringent child labor laws.